1. Field of the Invention
The application relates to infant positioners for positioning an infant while sleeping, and relates more particularly to positioners and accessories for reducing the risk of sudden infant death, positional plagiocephaly, and other conditions.
2. General Background and State of the Art
Medical studies have shown that infants who sleep on their backs have a reduced risk of dying suddenly from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), compared to infants who sleep on their stomachs. Efforts by the American Academy of Pediatrics to disseminate this information to pediatricians and parents have resulted in an increase in the practice of placing infants in a supine position for sleeping.
An unanticipated effect of the increasingly widespread practice of placing infants in a supine position for sleeping has been an increase in the number of infants developing positional plagiocephaly, i.e., a flat or misshapen area on the back of the skull. A newborn infant's skull is relatively deformable due to flexibility of the bone plates and non-fusion of the sutures between adjacent bone plates. This property of deformability permits the infant's head to pass between the bones of the mother's pelvis during birth. As the infant matures, however, the bone plates of the skull become increasingly rigid and the sutures eventually fuse.
When an infant spends many hours daily sleeping exclusively on his back, the bones at the back of the skull tend to flatten from pressure against the sleeping surface due to the weight of the infant's head. If the practice of sleeping exclusively on the back is continued through the critical period during which the bones of the skull become rigid, the flat or misshapen area on the back of the skull can become permanent.
Furthermore, if an infant spends prolonged periods sleeping on the same side of its body, plagiocephaly may occur on the side of the infant's head. The occurrence of plagiocephaly on a side of the infant's head may cause the infant's ear to gradually move toward the nose. Infants may spend prolonged periods sleeping on one side of their head if the infants are repeatedly laid on the same side when placed onto a mattress or pillow. Infants may regularly be placed on their same side since the guardian's may not know that they can reduce the risk of plagiocephaly by alternating the position of the infant when placing the infant on a mattress or pillow. Furthermore, knowledgeable guardians may repeatedly place the infant on its same side since guardians may forget which side the infant was last placed upon.